Meanwhile, hard-living, hard-drinking and hard who-knows-what-else Jerry Lee is 77 and still with us.

Some of our parents said he was perverted, too. He married his 13-year-old cousin, Myra, in December 1957. That made him an incestuous pedophile — certainly no role model for teenagers — in parents' eyes.

That marriage ruined his career in rock. Before he was reinvented as a country music artist, Lewis had to scramble for jobs. A German record company that reissued his work from the early 1960s refers to them as Lewis' “locust years.”

We weren't all that wild about him anyway — and not because he was supposed to be immoral. He was on a lot of the Montgomery rock station's shows, in which Top 40 bands would come out and play three or four songs, but Jerry Lee hadn't had a hit in years.

For us, he wasn't a legend — yet. He couldn't draw like The Four Seasons, The Animals, Herman's Hermits, Lou Christy or even The Reflections (remember “Just Like Romeo and Juliet”?).

The last time Jerry Lee had troubled the local rock charts was in 1958, when “Breathless” and “High School Confidential” made it big.

Plus, he was an older guy. He and Roy Orbison seemed to belong to a another generation.

Yet of all the radio station “Shower of Stars” performers, they were the most fun to watch.

They were at opposite poles.

Orbison, perpetually wearing sunglasses, was the King of Cool. Backed by his superb band, The Candymen, he didn't have to move a muscle. He just sang with that beautiful voice and knocked 'em dead.

Jerry Lee, by contrast, was hot. He would whip the audience into a frenzy with his torrid boogie-woogie piano, let his carefully coifed hair ooze down like a polluted river into his face, and kick over the bench and play with his toes on the last number.

At some shows in those pre-

Hendrix days, he even squirted the piano with lighter fluid and set it on fire, according to published reports. I never saw him do that, though.

I don't think they called him The Killer in the early 1960s, but he established a reputation for incendiary performances. His July 1964 outing at the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium was issued as “The Greatest Live Show on Earth,” and the title wasn't far from wrong. Recently reissued, it is a rock and roll masterpiece, with equal parts of inspiration and perspiration.

“A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On” was Jerry Lee's first big record. He used to play it to close out every concert. That's when he would kick over the piano bench. There's a smoking version of it on the “Greatest Live Show” album.

The song has a fascinating origin. Roy Hall, a co-author, told writer Nick Tosches that the tune merged on a drunken interracial trip to Florida.

“Me an' a black guy by the name of Dave Williams put it together,” Hall, then the 33-year-old pianist in Webb Pierce's band, said in Tosches' brilliant biography of Lewis, “Hellfire.” “We was down at Pahokee, Fla., out on Lake Okeechobee. We were drunk, writin' songs. We were out there havin' fun an' milkin' snakes, drinkin' wine. This guy had a big bell out there an' he'd ring it to get us all to come in for dinner. An' I called over to the other part of the island — I say, ‘What's goin' on?' Black guy said, ‘We got 21 drums' — see, they's all drunk — ‘We got an ol' bass horn an' they even keepin' time on a ding-dong.' See, that's the big bell they'd ring to get us to come in.”

Somehow, all of that swirled with the booze in Hall and Williams' brains, and they went back to Nashville with a new song.

Big Maybelle, the jazz and blues singer, was the first to record it. The record was issued in March 1954. Later, there were versions by Dolores Fredericks, a pop vocal group named The Commodores (not the Lionel Richie band) and Hall himself.

In her recording, Big Maybelle sang the original lines about 21 drums, a bass horn and a ding-dong.

In an interview with Tosches years later, Jerry Lee acknowledged that he wasn't the first person to record the song. But he thought that the original was laid down by Big Mama Thornton of Montgomery. And he thought Big Mama Thornton was dead.

Jerry Lee was wrong on both counts. But he got so belligerent about it that Tosches moved on to another point in the interview.

Jerry Lee didn't keep the lines about the drums, the bass and the bell. He just liked to goof around with the main part of the song at concerts.

But in February 1957, when producer Jack Clement suggested that he record it, Lewis turned in an astonishing one-take performance that rocketed up the charts.

It made him a star — until word of his marriage to Myra leaked out.

That marriage lasted for 13 years but Myra was actually his third wife. At age 14, he married Dorothy Barton; short of two years later he was wed again, to Jane Mitchum.

He had to marry Myra, daughter of his cousin and band member J.W. Brown, twice because he had neglected to properly divorce Barton the first time around.

Then in 1971 he married Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, who drowned shortly thereafter in their swimming pool. In less than a year, he married Shawn Stephens, who died three months later from a methadone overdose.

After that, Kerrie McCarver became Jerry Lee's sixth wife. Their marriage ended in divorce in 2004.

Last year, Lewis married Judith Brown.

Great balls of fire, as the groom would say!

Brown happens to be the ex- wife of Jerry Lee's cousin, Rusty Brown – who happens to be Myra's brother.

Jerry Lee's good about keeping it in the family.

Given his advanced age, Judith was described frequently in the press last year as Jerry Lee's “caregiver.”

Yet he certainly needed no one to take care of him when he recorded his most recent albums, “Last Man Standing” (catch the title?) and “Mean Old Man.” Released in 2007 and 2010 respectively, they are full of star duets, pumping piano and fiery rock and roll.

He hasn't released a new album recently, but he certainly needed no caregiver when he played at the ill-fated Bama Blast — the musical event that the University of Alabama used to have before Homecoming — here on Sept. 30, 1983.

I think that was the last time Jerry Lee played in Tuscaloosa. By every account, he was full of pepper and vinegar that night.

I regret that I didn't go. However, I had seen Jerry Lee in concert a year earlier, in July, at the most unusual setting imaginable: Orion's Barn Party, in Orrville, Ala.

Way out in the country, it was staged at a horse farm. Performers actually entertained in a barn, where a stage was erected.

I think Jerry Lee did the show as a favor to his friend, Jimmy Ellis, who masked and performed as Orion. Some people thought Ellis was Elvis in disguise and Ellis, who sang just like The King, went along with it.

Ellis was killed at his pawn shop and package store in Orrville during a 1998 robbery.

Anyway, a bunch of us drove down from Tuscaloosa mostly to hear Jerry Lee, who had by then achieved legendary status in our eyes.

He was billed at the time as a country singer, and he'd a had a few hits — “What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” was one — with a Nashville bent. But he still sounded like Jerry Lee.

It was a long, hot night in Orrville, and we did what we could to make ourselves comfortable and to make Jerry Lee sound best. By the time he came on stage, my friends and I had constructed a massive island of empty beer cans.

Did Jerry Lee close out with “Whole Lotta Shakin' ”?

Actually, I don't know if he sang it or not. I was zonked on what made Milwaukee famous.

But I do know this: Today, just like yesterday, The Killer rocks on.

Ben Windham is retired editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News. His email address is Swind15443@aol.com.

<p>You wouldn't expect that Jerry Lee Lewis would be the last surviving member of Sun's famous “Million Dollar Quartet.” Seems like Jerry Lee would be the first to go.</p><p>Yet Johnny Cash died in 2003; Carl Perkins in 1977; and Elvis — oh Lord, Elvis — departed this mortal coil in 1977.</p><p>Meanwhile, hard-living, hard-drinking and hard who-knows-what-else Jerry Lee is 77 and still with us.</p><p>Some of our parents said he was perverted, too. He married his 13-year-old cousin, Myra, in December 1957. That made him an incestuous pedophile — certainly no role model for teenagers — in parents' eyes.</p><p>That marriage ruined his career in rock. Before he was reinvented as a country music artist, Lewis had to scramble for jobs. A German record company that reissued his work from the early 1960s refers to them as Lewis' “locust years.”</p><p>We weren't all that wild about him anyway — and not because he was supposed to be immoral. He was on a lot of the Montgomery rock station's shows, in which Top 40 bands would come out and play three or four songs, but Jerry Lee hadn't had a hit in years. </p><p>For us, he wasn't a legend — yet. He couldn't draw like The Four Seasons, The Animals, Herman's Hermits, Lou Christy or even The Reflections (remember “Just Like Romeo and Juliet”?). </p><p>The last time Jerry Lee had troubled the local rock charts was in 1958, when “Breathless” and “High School Confidential” made it big.</p><p>Plus, he was an older guy. He and Roy Orbison seemed to belong to a another generation.</p><p>Yet of all the radio station “Shower of Stars” performers, they were the most fun to watch.</p><p>They were at opposite poles. </p><p>Orbison, perpetually wearing sunglasses, was the King of Cool. Backed by his superb band, The Candymen, he didn't have to move a muscle. He just sang with that beautiful voice and knocked 'em dead.</p><p>Jerry Lee, by contrast, was hot. He would whip the audience into a frenzy with his torrid boogie-woogie piano, let his carefully coifed hair ooze down like a polluted river into his face, and kick over the bench and play with his toes on the last number. </p><p>At some shows in those pre-</p><p>Hendrix days, he even squirted the piano with lighter fluid and set it on fire, according to published reports. I never saw him do that, though.</p><p>I don't think they called him The Killer in the early 1960s, but he established a reputation for incendiary performances. His July 1964 outing at the Birmingham Municipal Auditorium was issued as “The Greatest Live Show on Earth,” and the title wasn't far from wrong. Recently reissued, it is a rock and roll masterpiece, with equal parts of inspiration and perspiration.</p><p>“No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on [Jerry Lee's 1956 hit] 'Whole Lotta Shakin' for my money,” John Lennon told an interviewer.</p><p>“A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On” was Jerry Lee's first big record. He used to play it to close out every concert. That's when he would kick over the piano bench. There's a smoking version of it on the “Greatest Live Show” album.</p><p>The song has a fascinating origin. Roy Hall, a co-author, told writer Nick Tosches that the tune merged on a drunken interracial trip to Florida.</p><p>“Me an' a black guy by the name of Dave Williams put it together,” Hall, then the 33-year-old pianist in Webb Pierce's band, said in Tosches' brilliant biography of Lewis, “Hellfire.” “We was down at Pahokee, Fla., out on Lake Okeechobee. We were drunk, writin' songs. We were out there havin' fun an' milkin' snakes, drinkin' wine. This guy had a big bell out there an' he'd ring it to get us all to come in for dinner. An' I called over to the other part of the island — I say, 'What's goin' on?' Black guy said, 'We got 21 drums' — see, they's all drunk — 'We got an ol' bass horn an' they even keepin' time on a ding-dong.' See, that's the big bell they'd ring to get us to come in.”</p><p>Somehow, all of that swirled with the booze in Hall and Williams' brains, and they went back to Nashville with a new song.</p><p>Big Maybelle, the jazz and blues singer, was the first to record it. The record was issued in March 1954. Later, there were versions by Dolores Fredericks, a pop vocal group named The Commodores (not the Lionel Richie band) and Hall himself.</p><p>In her recording, Big Maybelle sang the original lines about 21 drums, a bass horn and a ding-dong.</p><p>In an interview with Tosches years later, Jerry Lee acknowledged that he wasn't the first person to record the song. But he thought that the original was laid down by Big Mama Thornton of Montgomery. And he thought Big Mama Thornton was dead.</p><p>Jerry Lee was wrong on both counts. But he got so belligerent about it that Tosches moved on to another point in the interview.</p><p>Jerry Lee didn't keep the lines about the drums, the bass and the bell. He just liked to goof around with the main part of the song at concerts.</p><p>But in February 1957, when producer Jack Clement suggested that he record it, Lewis turned in an astonishing one-take performance that rocketed up the charts. </p><p>It made him a star — until word of his marriage to Myra leaked out.</p><p>That marriage lasted for 13 years but Myra was actually his third wife. At age 14, he married Dorothy Barton; short of two years later he was wed again, to Jane Mitchum.</p><p>He had to marry Myra, daughter of his cousin and band member J.W. Brown, twice because he had neglected to properly divorce Barton the first time around.</p><p>Then in 1971 he married Jaren Elizabeth Gunn Pate, who drowned shortly thereafter in their swimming pool. In less than a year, he married Shawn Stephens, who died three months later from a methadone overdose. </p><p>After that, Kerrie McCarver became Jerry Lee's sixth wife. Their marriage ended in divorce in 2004.</p><p>Last year, Lewis married Judith Brown. </p><p>Great balls of fire, as the groom would say!</p><p>Brown happens to be the ex- wife of Jerry Lee's cousin, Rusty Brown – who happens to be Myra's brother.</p><p>Jerry Lee's good about keeping it in the family.</p><p>Given his advanced age, Judith was described frequently in the press last year as Jerry Lee's “caregiver.”</p><p>Yet he certainly needed no one to take care of him when he recorded his most recent albums, “Last Man Standing” (catch the title?) and “Mean Old Man.” Released in 2007 and 2010 respectively, they are full of star duets, pumping piano and fiery rock and roll.</p><p>He hasn't released a new album recently, but he certainly needed no caregiver when he played at the ill-fated Bama Blast — the musical event that the University of Alabama used to have before Homecoming — here on Sept. 30, 1983. </p><p>I think that was the last time Jerry Lee played in Tuscaloosa. By every account, he was full of pepper and vinegar that night.</p><p>I regret that I didn't go. However, I had seen Jerry Lee in concert a year earlier, in July, at the most unusual setting imaginable: Orion's Barn Party, in Orrville, Ala.</p><p>Way out in the country, it was staged at a horse farm. Performers actually entertained in a barn, where a stage was erected.</p><p>I think Jerry Lee did the show as a favor to his friend, Jimmy Ellis, who masked and performed as Orion. Some people thought Ellis was Elvis in disguise and Ellis, who sang just like The King, went along with it.</p><p>Ellis was killed at his pawn shop and package store in Orrville during a 1998 robbery.</p><p>Anyway, a bunch of us drove down from Tuscaloosa mostly to hear Jerry Lee, who had by then achieved legendary status in our eyes.</p><p>He was billed at the time as a country singer, and he'd a had a few hits — “What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” was one — with a Nashville bent. But he still sounded like Jerry Lee.</p><p>It was a long, hot night in Orrville, and we did what we could to make ourselves comfortable and to make Jerry Lee sound best. By the time he came on stage, my friends and I had constructed a massive island of empty beer cans.</p><p>Did Jerry Lee close out with “Whole Lotta Shakin' ”?</p><p>Actually, I don't know if he sang it or not. I was zonked on what made Milwaukee famous.</p><p>But I do know this: Today, just like yesterday, The Killer rocks on.</p><p>Ben Windham is retired editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News. His email address is Swind15443@aol.com.</p>